Stevens,
impressed by March for Our Lives demonstrations last Saturday, called for repeal
of the Second Amendment, which he said is antiquated.

The
amendment, as you know, states “a well regulated militia, being necessary to
the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms,
shall not be infringed.”

It
was adopted out of “concern that a national standing army might pose a threat
to the security of the separate states,” Stevens wrote Tuesday in an op-ed in
The New York Times. “Today that concern is a relic of the 18th
century.”

Told
ya so, the NRA crowed.

“I
have long said the ultimate goal of the left is the complete repeal of the
Second Amendment,” said NRATV host Grant Stinchfield. “This is proof, my
friends.”

No,
actually, it’s not.

Stevens
was expressing his own provocative opinion. He doesn’t speak for “the left” any
more than the NRA speaks for all gun owners, many of whom support common-sense
gun safety measures.

The
inspiring young protesters would be wise to thank Stevens, 97, for his support and
get to work lobbying their legislators, registering to vote, backing candidates
who support stricter gun laws and voting.

Repeal
isn’t “simple,” as he said, or even doable. It’s a distraction, and a
self-defeating one.

President
Donald Trump’s response to Stevens – complete with the laying on of the caps
lock key and exclamation points -- shows he thinks this is just the issue to fire
up his base.

“THE
SECOND AMENDMENT WILL NEVER BE REPEALED! As much as Democrats would like to see
this happen and despite the words yesterday of former Supreme Court Justice
Stevens, NO WAY. We need more Republicans in 2018 and must ALWAYS hold the
Supreme Court!” Trump tweeted at 4:52 a.m. Wednesday.

Yes,
4:52 a.m.

Only
about one in five voters strongly or somewhat favors repeal, according to an Economist-YouGov
poll in February, which found tepid support for repeal among Democrats, about
39 percent. Only 8 percent of Republicans supported repeal.

Stevens,
appointed to the court by Republican President Gerald Ford, became a liberal
bulwark. He retired in 2010, two years after writing a dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller, which determined there is an
individual right to bear arms. Stevens still believes the court’s decision in
that case was wrong.

“In
1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the
possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation
to the preservation or efficiency of a `well regulated militia,’” he wrote in The
Times.

The
idea that gun rights were limited held until the 1980s, when the NRA and other
groups mobilized, he said.

Amending
the Constitution is intentionally difficult. The likely path requires a
two-thirds vote of both the House and the Senate and ratification by
three-fourths of the states.

Alternatively, two-thirds of the states could call for a
constitutional convention where amendments would be proposed. That would open
the door to heaven knows what – and is so daunting it’s never been tried. The
amendments would then need to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.

If
trying to repeal the Second Amendment is not the solution to ending gun
violence, grassroots activism could be.

With
Trump having backed off his support for gun safety measures and Congress apparently
paralyzed, gun safety advocates are smart to focus on the states. But they’ll need
to persevere to make even modest progress.

After
protests in Tallahassee following the Parkland shootings Feb. 14, Florida Gov.
Rick Scott, a Republican, signed tighter gun laws, including raising to 21 the
minimum age to buy rifles and shotguns, requiring a three-day waiting period to
buy long guns and arming some staff.

The NRA immediately filed suit to block
some of the provisions.

Rhode
Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, signed a “red flag” executive order policy
Feb. 26, allowing police to take guns from people who pose a danger to
themselves or others.

“If
the federal government won’t act, states need to do more to prevent the gun
violence that has become far too common,” Raimondo said.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Why does he act so guilty? What does he have to hide?
What does Vladimir Putin have on him?

Those are questions being raised by Republicans as
well as Democrats as President Donald Trump seems poised to end special counsel
Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian tampering in the 2016
election.

“When you are innocent . . . act like it,” Rep. Trey
Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, urged the president Sunday on “Fox News
Sunday.”

“If you’ve done nothing wrong, you should want the
investigation to be as fulsome and thorough as possible,” said Gowdy, a member
of the House Intelligence Committee.

Sen. Lindsey Graham warned firing Mueller would
“probably” be an impeachable offense. Graham
should know. He was one of the House managers of the impeachment case against
President Bill Clinton in 1998.

If Trump were to fire Mueller, “I can’t see it being
anything other than a corrupt purpose,” Graham, a South Carolina Republican,
said Tuesday on the Hugh Hewitt radio show.

Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona, tweeted:
“Special Counsel Mueller has served our country with honesty and integrity. It
is critical he be allowed to complete a thorough investigation into Russia’s
interference in the 2016 election – unimpeded.”

Fine words. Now it’s time for Congress to pass stalled
legislation to protect the work of special counsels, including Mueller.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee voted
Thursday to release, after classified material is redacted, their report that
there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, a finding
they announced March 13. Democrats on the committee strongly oppose release,
saying Republicans ended the investigation prematurely.

Until now, many GOP members of Congress have said
legislation to protect special counsels was unnecessary because Trump would
never fire Mueller.

But Trump is reshaping his legal team, hiring Joseph
diGenova, a former U.S. attorney who claims the FBI and Justice Department
framed Trump. And last weekend Trump launched tweets attacking Mueller
personally.

“The Mueller probe should never have been started in
that there was no collusion and there was no crime,” he tweeted. The Mueller
probe is “a total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!”

John Dowd, Trump’s personal attorney, said Saturday it
was time to shut down the Mueller probe, although he later claimed he was only
speaking for himself. He resigned Thursday, reportedly because Trump was ignoring
his advice.

White House lawyer Ty Cobb said in a statement Sunday:
“The White House yet again confirms that the president is not considering or
discussing the firing” of Mueller.

But Trump’s calling out Mueller by name was a barrage
too far. The timing was also suspect, coming just after Mueller reportedly
subpoenaed financial records of the Trump Organization.

“Unfortunately, the statements and actions from the
president and his lawyer over the weekend have led me to believe that the
special counsel is now at real, immediate risk of being removed, and I believe
the Senate needs to pass legislation to ensure that does not happen,” Sen.
Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat and cosponsor of a bipartisan bill with Sen.
Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, said Monday.

The Special Counsel Integrity Act would create a
judicial review process to prevent the removal of special counsels without good
cause.

Another bill, the Special Counsel Independence
Protection Act, would permit the firing of a special counsel only if a federal
court found “misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest,
or other good cause for removal.”

Introduced by Graham in the Senate, it has three
Democratic cosponsors, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode
Island and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

Companion bills for both bills have been introduced in
the House. One bill by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, has 130
cosponsors, all Democrats, including Reps. A. Donald McEachin and Don Beyer of
Virginia.

The bills had hearings in the respective Judiciary committees
but are stalled.

Trump seems eager to shut Mueller down or at least to discredit
his findings. Republicans as well as Democrats say Mueller should be allowed to
complete his investigation.

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Can you name five women artists? Off the top of your
head. No Googling.

Take your time. I’ll wait.

If you found the question tougher than you expected,
as I did, we’re not alone. When the National Museum of Women in the Arts hit the
streets of Washington and asked people to name five, a common response was,
“Um.” Most people couldn’t.

The museum launched the challenge March 1 for Women’s
History Month. Now in its third year, the #5WomenArtists social media campaign
aims to make people aware of gender inequality in the art world.

It’s embarrassing to realize how few women artists’
names leap to mind – after Georgia O’Keeffe, of course – but it’s not entirely
our fault. Women are often the subject of art in museums but rarely the
creators.

As the provocative poster by Guerrilla Girls, a group
of anonymous feminist art activists, reads: “Do women have to be naked to get
into U.S. museums?”

In 1989, women artists were less than 5 percent of the
artists but more than 85 percent

of the nudes in the modern art sections of New
York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Surely, you say, things are better now. Nope. In 2011,
women artists were less than 4 percent of the artists and 76 percent of the
nudes in the modern art sections at the Met, the group reported.

If you look at a work of art in the National Gallery
of Art, there’s only a 4 percent chance it was created by a woman, say researchers
at the data analysis firm Priceonomics, who pored over the gallery’s online
collection of nearly 100,000 works.

Male dominance on museum
walls reflects when the art works were created, Priceonomics says, explaining
that more than 70 percent of the art at the National Gallery was created before
1950 and only 4 percent since 1990, when gender parity was first achieved among
debut artists.

The women’s museum sprang from another simple, but
rarely asked, question: Where are all the women artists?

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, now 95, and her late
husband, Wallace, startedcollecting art
by women in the 1960s, opened their Georgetown home for art tours and then
founded the private, nonprofit museum a few blocks from the White House.

Its collection of more than 5,000 pieces from the 16th
century to the present includes work by Louise Bourgeois, Mary Cassatt, Judy
Chicago, Frida Kahlo and Amy Sherald, whose portrait of Michelle Obama was
recently unveiled at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

When the women’s museum opened in 1987, some women
artists weren’t keen on being pigeon-holed by gender, and some critics panned it.

“A virtuous bore,” sniped critic Robert Hughes in Time
magazine. He dismissed the museum as “a grimly sentimental waste of money, an
idea whose time is gone” and predicted it would soon be irrelevant.

Except that it wasn’t.

Women artists are still exceptional, a nice way of
saying neglected. But that’s changing. Millions saw the Google doodle on March
8, International Women’s Day, featuring 12 female artists.

Last year, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, one
of the world’s oldest and most famous museums, had its first exhibition of work
by Plautilla Nelli, a 16th century nun considered the first woman
Florentine painter. The Uffizi promises more exhibitions of art by lost women
artists.

Rediscovering and restoring women’s art in Florence is
the inspiring mission of American Jane Fortune – sometimes called Indiana Jane
– and the Advancing Women Artists Foundation she founded.

Closer to home, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts had
an exhibition of “Women Artists and Abstract Expressionism” from May 2016 to
January 2017. You can find an audio tour on the museum’s website that features
16 of the nearly 300 women artists in its collection.

The #MeToo movement has raised consciousness, as we
used to say, about the need for women’s perspective in all aspects of society,
including the art world. But what action can we take?

Ask museums and galleries to exhibit more women
artists. Praise exhibitions that strive for gender equity, criticize those that
fall short. Share your enthusiasm with the staff and on social media, the
women’s museum suggests.

And, of course, buy artwork by women.

Next year we’ll see if we can name five women artists
without an “Um.”

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

With two words, Frances McDormand proposed a brilliant strategy to bring
more women and minorities to the silver screen.

“I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentlemen:
inclusion rider,” McDormand said Sunday as she accepted the Oscar for best
actress in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”

And so America learned a clunky legalese phrase that could change movies
forever. Google and the Merriam-Webster
dictionary site lit up with searches for inclusion and rider.

By putting an inclusion rider in their contracts, A-list actors,
directors or producers could ensure women, racial minorities, disabled people
and members of the LGBT community are hired for speaking roles and on set. McDormand
said she’d heard of the concept only a week earlier.

“You can ask for and/or demand at least 50 percent diversity in not only
the casting, but also the crew,” she told reporters backstage after the Oscars
ceremony. “The fact that I learned that after 35 years in the film business –
we aren’t going back.”

The pace of change surrounding the #MeToo movement is quickening. As
recently as January, actors and others wearing all black at the Golden Globes to
protest sexual harassment seemed a bold statement. A symbolic show of
solidarity is nice, but . . .

Now, encouraging signs suggest symbolism may lead to solutions to promote
women in the movie business.

Brie Larson, who won best actress for her role in the 2015 film, “Room,”
tweeted: “I’m committed to the Inclusion Rider. Who’s with me?”

There is pushback, of course.

“We’re not so big on doing everything through agreements,” said Netflix
CEO Reed Hastings.

The “epidemic of invisibility” of women in films has raged for more than half
a century, says Stacy L. Smith, who came up with the inclusion rider concept in
2014.

Smith, director of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University
of Southern California, has studied gender inequality in more than 900 popular
films. She found women still are only about 31 percent of the speaking
characters.

A typical feature film has 40 to 45 speaking characters, but only eight
to 10 are actually relevant to the story, she said in a 2016 TED talk, adding there’s
no reason the remaining characters can’t reflect the world being depicted.

Smith also urges studio executives to adopt the NFL’s Rooney Rule in
considering directors. The Rooney Rule -- named for the late Pittsburgh
Steelers owner Dan Rooney -- requires teams to interview at least one minority
candidate for each coach and general manager job. It’s become a model for other
industries, and while it has its share of critics, it does get members of
minorities into the rooms where decisions are made.

Women are woefully behind in other areas of movie-making. In 2017, women
were just 18 percent of all the directors, writers, producers, executive
producers and cinematographers working on the top 250 domestic grossing films, reports
Martha M. Lauzen of Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San
Diego State University. That figure was virtually unchanged since 1998.

The more women directors, writers and producers, the more the movies will
depict life from a woman’s perspective. That’s important because stories on screen
not only entertain us but also help form our view of the world -- often for the
worst when it comes to gratuitous violence and mayhem, but that’s a topic for
another day.

Sometimes change takes place one on one. Actress Jessica Chastain, nominated
for two Academy Awards, is a vocal critic of the pay gap between men and women
in Hollywood. She learned from Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer about the chasm in
pay between white and black actresses.

Spencer credits Chastain with helping her get a pay raise five times
Spencer’s usual salary for the holiday comedy they’re currently making together.

Each of us also has a role to play in promoting the inclusion of
unrepresented groups in the movies. We can look for and buy tickets to movies
with women stars, directors, writers and diverse casts. We can tell our friends
and post on social media.

#MeToo Movement Fuels a 1970s Comeback: The ERA

Supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment hold a sign as they are introduced in the gallery of the Virginia House earlier this month. The fight for the constitutional amendment is drawing momentum from the 2016 election and the #MeToo movement.

Steve Helber/The Associated Press

Scott Surovell was a baby in a stroller when his mother took him to hearings on the Equal Rights Amendment in the early 1970s, and growing up, he often heard stories about the need for the ERA.

Now a Democratic state senator in Virginia, the 46-year-old has introduced a bill to ratify the ERA for the last six years, three when he was a member of the Virginia House and three in the Senate. Surovell has fallen short every time — most recently Feb. 9, when House and Senate committees quashed it. The Republican committee chairmen said floor votes were improper because the time limit for ratification set by Congress expired in 1982.

This year’s loss came despite a spirited demonstration by more than a hundred supporters in the Capitol, who sang “We Shall Overcome” and shouted “Shame! Shame!”

Many Americans either think the ERA is already part of the U.S. Constitution or that it has gone the way of John Travolta’s white leisure suit in “Saturday Night Fever.” But the fight goes on, and it is drawing fresh momentum from the 2016 election and the #MeToo movement.

The Constitution says an amendment must be approved by three-fourths of the states. But it does not mention a deadline, so supporters argue that Congress can extend the 1982 ERA deadline again, or waive it. The 27th Amendment on congressional pay raises, for example, was ratified 203 years after Congress proposed it.

Nevada last March became the 36th state to approve the ERA, meaning that supporters need only two more states to reach the 38 required for ratification. Before Nevada, the last state to ratify had been Indiana in 1977.

“The votes have all been hair-breadth losses — until Nevada,” said Roberta W. Francis, ERA education consultant for the Alice Paul Institute, a nonprofit in New Jersey that advocates for women. “This is a time when there’s a lot more energy under the ERA.”

Besides Nevada and Virginia, the states that did not ratify by the 1982 deadline are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah.

Equal Rights Amendment supporters voice their disapproval of the Florida Senate’s defeat of an ERA ratification bill in 1982.

The Associated Press

Twenty-three states have added equal rights amendments to their state constitutions, mostly during the years the national ERA effort was moribund. Oregon added an equal rights guarantee to its Constitution in 2014, and legislators in Delaware and Vermont are working on state ERAs this year.

“We’re seeing a sea change where it’s becoming much harder to deny the truths of women’s voices,” said Georgia state Sen. Nan Orrock, a Democrat who has worked to ratify the ERA during 31 years in the Legislature. “There’s a palpable sense of women on the move.”

Nevada Surprise

The federal ERA’s main provision states that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.”

An ERA was first introduced in Congress in 1923, and Congress approved it in 1972, sending it to the states for ratification with a deadline of 1979, and extending it in 1978, to 1982.

In the current Congress, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, and U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, have proposed removing the deadline, allowing the ERA to become part of the Constitution as soon as a 38th state ratifies it. U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, would start over with new language in a “fresh start” amendment.

One question mark is how to count the five states — Nebraska, Tennessee, Idaho, Kentucky and South Dakota — that later rescinded their ratifications. Courts have not ruled whether rescission is lawful.

In Nevada, the ERA’s prospects were bleak until just recently. Democratic Nevada state Sen. Pat Spearman got nowhere when she pushed for ERA ratification in 2015.

“People would tell me it was nothing more than a stunt, it didn’t mean anything, and we shouldn’t be wasting people’s time,” she said.

But when Democrats won control of the Nevada Legislature in 2016, Spearman saw her chance. Another advantage: Female lawmakers now make up about 40 percent of the Nevada Legislature, as much as any state.

Last March, the Nevada Senate passed the measure 13-8, with all Democrats and one Republican female senator voting in favor. In the Nevada Assembly, the vote was 28-14, again with all Democrats and one Republican woman voting for passage.

“If you had called me in mid-2016, I would not have said Nevada would ratify,” said Bettina Hager, Washington, D.C., director of the ERA Coalition and Fund for Women’s Equality, an advocacy group.

“What happened was everything was lined up,” Hager said. “You need three things to be in play: a strong lead sponsor, advocates working on the ground, and the makeup of the Legislature. Nobody was expecting it to go that well.”

Illinois as Epicenter

Illinois, long the epicenter of the Stop ERA movement, is poised to be a battleground once again.

State Sen. Heather Steans, a Democrat, said a number of Republicans who support the ERA but fear a challenge from the right have told her privately they will vote for it in April, after the March 20 primary.

Pro-ERA groups have formed a coalition that is sponsoring screenings around the state of a documentary about women, “Equal Means Equal.”

Michelle Fadeley, the Illinois chapter president for the National Organization for Women, said for the last six months she has been speaking at least four times a month to large audiences at screenings. “We are highly hopeful it’s going to happen this year in Illinois.”

Phyllis Schlafly, leader of the effort to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, in 1976.

The Associated Press

Phyllis Schlafly, who was born in St. Louis and lived in Alton, Illinois, was the face of the national fight against the ERA during the 1970s and early ’80s. Schlafly argued that the amendment would lead to coed bathrooms, require women to be drafted into the military and taxpayers to pay for abortions, among other things.

Over the years, the kinds of changes in society Schlafly warned about have come to pass — without the ERA. Same-sex marriage and adoption by gay couples are legal, women voluntarily serve in combat, and mothers can be required to pay child support.

Schlafly died in 2016 at 92, but the Eagle Forum she founded continues the fight, using many of her arguments.

“You could compel women to be drafted and put into combat,” said Elise Bouc, chairwoman of Stop ERA Illinois. “Now they have a choice, but they’d have to be drafted in equal ratios to men and placed in equal ratios in front-line combat.”

The Catholic Conference of Illinois, which lobbies on behalf of church members in the state Capitol, also plans to oppose the ERA, said Bob Gilligan, conference executive director. The conference did not take a stand the last two legislative sessions, when it was focused on tax issues involving church schools.

“This issue has been around since 1972, and many believe the clock has expired with the time allotted to pass the ERA,” Gilligan said. “We’re also opposed because the language should more accurately reflect current issues.” He said his group is worried that courts might use the ERA to mandate publicly funded abortions, or force Catholic hospitals to perform gender reassignment surgeries.

Stuck in the ’70s?

But some legal scholars have the opposite worry: that the 1970s ERA isn’t expansive enough.

“My idea for the ERA today is we should not be stuck in the 1970s,” said Julie C. Suk, professor at Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, who has studied equal rights measures around the world.

“We need to start thinking about remaining inequalities — persistent pay inequity, lack of accommodation for pregnancies, and lack of paid parental leave,” she said. “Will the ERA help us solve these problems or stand in our way?”

The current ERA language prohibits discrimination by states and the federal government but not corporations. Judges could decide what the amendment covers, Suk said, adding that for judges to understand the amendment’s intent, supporters need to be loud.

In Virginia, Surovell is planning his strategy for next year.

“I’m going to find a Republican chief sponsor,” he said, noting that the ERA has bipartisan support in the General Assembly, and two Republicans on the Senate Rules Committee voted in favor.

“All politicians — Republican and Democrat — need to be aware that women are very upset right now with what’s going on in Washington,” Surovell said. “They’re looking for an affirmative story.”

Even in this wildly unpredictable White House, President
Donald Trump’s call for “beautiful” and “comprehensive”
gun control was a Believe It or Not! moment.

“I think it’s time that a president stepped up,” Trump
declared Wednesday at a televised meeting on school safety with members of
Congress at the White House.

“We want to pass something great, and to me the
something great has to be where we prevent it from happening again,” he said.

It
is
the mass shooting of children in American schools.

The Feb. 14 massacre of 17 students and staff at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, could be a tipping point
in the long-stalled gun control movement. Unless it isn’t.

Sadly, we’ve been here before. After 20 children and
six adults were gunned down in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown,
Connecticut, President Barack Obama tried to expand background checks to all
gun purchases, among other measures.

The National Rifle Association resisted, congressional
Republicans and some Democrats balked, and nothing changed.

This time, though, while politicians talk, big business
is taking action.

Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart announced Wednesday they
will no longer sell firearms to anyone under 21. Dick’s will no longer sell
assault-style rifles, a move Walmart made in 2015.

Walmart said in a
statement: “Our heritage as a company has always been in serving sportsmen and
hunters, and we will continue to do so in a responsible way.”

Many familiar brands, including Avis, Hertz, Delta Air
Lines and United Airlines, have dropped NRA discount programs.

“The loss of a discount will neither scare nor
distract one single NRA member,” the NRA said in a defiant statement.

The Florida shooter had bought a shotgun at Dick’s last
November. The gun was not used in the school massacre; he used an AR-15, a
semiautomatic. “But it could have been,” Stack wrote.

A troubled 18-year-old in Vermont bought a shotgun
from Dick’s Feb. 13 and had plans for “shooting up” his high school.
A17-year-old girl, concerned about his threatening texts, showed her phone to a
high school guidance counselor who called authorities. The would-be mass
murderer has been charged and is in jail.

Trump’s relationship with the NRA, which claims 5
million members, is conflicted. In his 2000 book “The America We Deserve,” Trump
wrote: “I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault
weapons and I support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun.”

The NRA spent an unprecedented $30 million to elect him,
and he reassured NRA members at their convention last year: “I will never, ever
let you down.”

There’s “no bigger
fan” of the NRA than he, but “That doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything,”
he said Wednesday. And he chided lawmakers for bowing to the NRA.

“They do have great
power. . . They have great power over you people. They have less power over
me,” he said. “Some of you people are petrified of the NRA. You can’t be
petrified.”

Trump said he wants expanded background checks and is open
to raising the age for buying assault-style rifles to 21. He wants police to be
able to confiscate guns from mentally ill people, although that would be
constitutionally dubious.

"Take the guns first, go
through due process second,” he said.

He promised an executive order to ban bump stocks, attachments
that make a semi-automatic rifle act like a machine gun, and urged ending “gun
free school zones” and arming school personnel.

“I would rather have a comprehensive bill,” he said. “It
would be really nice to create something that’s beautiful.”

If he actually follows through, Trump could go down in
history as the president who led the nation in stopping gun violence. Or he
could pivot.

In a White House meeting on immigration in January.
Trump promised to sign whatever compromise Congress passed. Then the White
House torpedoed bipartisan legislation.

It’s easy to imagine a repeat with guns.

The student-led #NeverAgain movement is changing the
way Americans think about gun rights and the gun lobby. Corporations and
consumers are finally saying “Enough” to mass killings. Bravo.

Now politicians in Washington need to conquer their
fear of the NRA and act to save lives.